Green governance and its peer effect in the Yangtze River Delta region of China

Abstract

The extensive development of social economy and other fields poses challenges to environmental management in the new era. The pressure of climate adaptation and the failure of environmental regulation policies make the Chinese government seek a new environmental management model. Green governance is the foothold of connecting China's economic, social, ecological, cultural, and political construction. It is leading the updation of China's environmental governance model. Based on the connotation of green governance, a green governance analysis framework is constructed. And we take China's most developed Yangtze River Delta region as the research object. Scientific evaluation of green governance using super‐efficiency data envelopment analysis (DEA) and nonradial DEA‐Malmquist models is done. On this basis, the peer effect in green governance is integrated and analyzed, to clarify the extent to which this implicit driving force and internal political efficacy influence the final level of green governance. Research shows that cities in the Yangtze River Delta show positive green governance results. With the intensification of the degree of geographic integration, the convergence of green governance is strengthened, and the spatial agglomeration effect of green governance is characterized by the strengthening of the same group effect. The existence of spatial relationships makes local governments rely on a strong financial support system and industrial transformation foundation to counter the pressure of regional competition in green governance. With the increase of geographical distance, the peer effect of green governance tends to decline, but across the regional boundary under the provincial interaction framework, the peer effect does not disappear.